


Somewhere That's Green

by Glinda



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Female Friendship, Internalized Misogyny, Mutual Masturbation, Pre-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:56:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5020231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're all his prisoners in different ways. Miss Giddy and Furiosa just have a longer leash than the Wives. They all dream of the Green Place, whether they believe they'll get there is a different matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere That's Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PhoenixGryffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixGryffin/gifts).



> I had so much fun writing this story. It's such an interesting world to play in. This is also a little bit smutty, I haven't written smut in ages, so apologies if I'm a little rusty...

Looking back, it seems to the rest of them that it was the coming of Cheedo that changed everything. They’d all seen wives come and go before, at 6000 days she wasn’t the youngest they’d seen but she was certainly the most innocent. Untouched and not yet on her blood, she was pure and precious to Joe. He would be oddly gentle with her and with them whenever she was near. They appreciated the respite but didn’t expect it to last. It didn’t seem like a watershed moment. At the time the person bringing her to join them was more of a revelation. They hadn’t seen Furiosa since the accident, since her miraculous survival and rise to Imperator status. This, Miss Giddy would tell them later had been her first real test as an Imperator, to bring back safely this new wife of Joe’s. Furiosa lingers in the doorway a little, watching as Cheedo wanders around her new home, wonder and curiosity on her face. 

“For what its worth,” she says at last, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? For what?” Cheedo doesn’t understand, although the others do, “it’s so clean and bright and beautiful here. I thought I was coming somewhere terrible. But this place is like Immortan Joe himself, scary on the outside but kind inside.”

“May it be a very long time before you learn otherwise,” Furiosa pauses before continuing more softly, “may you find it in yourself to forgive me when you do.”

She’s gone with barely a murmured word to Miss Giddy about the newest wife’s background. They don’t see her for a long while afterwards. When the price of her new power is no longer as heavy a weight on her shoulders. 

~

Miss Giddy keeps the Wives who are on their blood, separate from those who are not at night. If their husband does not require them, they normally sleep in a puppy pile of arms and legs, as though that will protect them from the bad dream that is their life. None of them are quite sure why and Miss Giddy only mutters darkly about cycles and moons and not setting each other off when they ask. (Toast remembers her own mother and sister used to always bleed at the same time, and that after she’d started her own cycle she’d soon come in line with them. Never do to have them all bleeding at once, so Joe couldn’t get his jollies, she suggests.) Whatever the reason, they spend the nights leading up to and during it, sleeping in the antechamber beyond the room they normally sleep in. The pleasure of the rare privacy it affords is too great for any of them to protest it much. It is barely 200 days after her capture that Cheedo joins the rest of them in taking her turn at monthly solitude. 

~

Cheedo is new to the process and late bloomer that she is, still distressed by it. She whimpers unhappily at Dag’s side, even in sleep. Miss Giddy’s potions are good but take a while to kick in but at least Dag knows another technique to take the edge of it. She’s just getting into her stride when she feels Cheedo’s puzzled gaze upon her. As she somewhat exasperatedly explains herself, she realises – in the face of Cheedo’s widening eyes and increasing bafflement – that the younger girl truly does not know. She puts aside her annoyance and attempts to provide instruction instead. (The thought of touching herself while Cheedo is doing the same gives her a small bolt of guilty pleasure.) But Cheedo can’t quite get the hang of it, is growing frustrated by her lack of success. So Dag takes her hand and shows her how to do it properly. 

Perhaps it’s the night cool feel of Cheedo’s skin on her own overheated flesh or the novelty of someone else touching her that Dag actually wanted to be touching her, but she can’t remember when it last felt so good. In the end she has to stop guiding Cheedo’s hand and use her own to silence her groans of pleasure but Cheedo is a quick learner when she gets a practical demonstration and proves adept at when to move gently and when to push harder, when to dip and when to twist. 

She looks high as kite when they’re done, joyful and free in a way Dag has never seen before. Dag is filled with a bone deep certainty that she could kill Joe with her own bare hands to keep him from stealing that look from Cheedo’s eyes. She buries the thought in returning the favour, whispering encouragements in Cheedo’s ear to show her what she enjoys. Kissing her forehead, cheeks and breasts, before being dragged into a proper kiss that allows her to swallow Cheedo’s cries of pleasure. 

It becomes a monthly pleasure for them, whenever their cycles align. A rare and rationed pleasure, though often Dag can feel Cheedo’s eyes upon her, both of them longing to indulge. Dag’s not quite sure why they hide it from the other girls, suspects that they have all at one point or another lain awake waiting for their fellows to be asleep to give themselves a little comfort. How much better to share? Nonetheless, she bites her tongue and Cheedo follows her lead, The Dag is not willing to share Cheedo with the rest of them, not like this. 

~

Pregnancy changes them. First it makes Angharad sick and then it makes her strong. It suits her: makes her blossom. Her skin glows, her hair is glossy and somewhere deep inside, growing in sync with her baby, a steely determination is solidifying and coming to the surface. They called her splendid for a reason, but before it was her calm endurance, the way nothing – no pain, no suffering, no indignity – could touch her, the way her scars seemed to add to rather than take away from her beauty. It’s different now. As though her visible pregnancy affords her protection - no-one would dare raise a hand to her now, no one will risk the baby, now only Furiosa will risk an argument with her - allows her to carve out a space of freedom inside her head and inside the heads of her fellow wives. Perhaps even inside Furiosa’s head too. Perhaps that’s what prompts her to tell the story of the Green Place, to share those precious childhood memories of a better life. She probably didn’t mean to prompt an insurrection, but it lights a fire inside Angharad that will not be quenched. Her baby will not be a warlord. She will find it a better world or die in the attempt. Her conviction makes her glow, it makes her seem bulletproof. 

For The Dag on the other hand, Pregnancy is not a gift. She’s sick as a dog, running hot and cold, itching like she’s about to shed her skin. She dreams about that sometimes, that one day she will shed her skin like a snake. Slough off this skinny, awkward, angry girl, to reveal a War Pup, painted white and ready to lead others to their death. The Dag doesn’t remember a time when she wasn’t angry. It feels like it has always been with her just under the skin, simmering away waiting for the opportunity to explode. She used to be better at controlling it. 

(Used to be is a relative term, long ago she fought and spat and bit like a wild cat. Long ago some half-bit warlord in Gas Town called her ‘coltishly beautiful’ and ‘spirited’ and she kicked like a mule and spat in his eye, so he vowed to break her like a horse. Chains and beatings couldn’t keep her down but in the end they found a way to tame her, she bought her younger siblings’ freedom and safety with her body – for them she will bite her tongue. But that was long ago and another city ago.) 

But the flooding hormones demolish all her defences and she is as wild and wilful as she was at barely 5000 days old. She cannot bear to be touched and even the voices and smells of her sister wives, usually so comforting is like sand in her hair, grating on her nerves, wearing her down. Capable and Toast gather around Angharad, who moves among them so serene and filled with dangerous dreams. But Cheedo stays with her. Cheedo: whose innocence and purity makes her special and gives her protection from Joe. Not forever, but for a while longer. Cheedo is nearly 3000 days younger than The Dag, but Dag doesn’t think she was ever as gentle or as innocent as Cheedo is now. Cheedo is the only one of them who has never felt the whiplash of The Dag’s tongue directed against her. Cheedo is fragile and her step is light, her voice soothes and her touch is a balm when nothing else brings The Dag comfort. 

Normally it takes the form of stroking and braiding her hair, but this night it feels like her hair roots are on fire and she cannot bear it. Instead Cheedo presses butterfly kisses to her shoulder and Dag finds that she can stand this. Cheedo whispers adoring compliments into her skin. Dag feels like a beached whale with an alien organism growing inside her, but Cheedo sees only wonder in the process, in the stretch of skin and muscle, swelling breasts and belly and worships them accordingly. All of Dag’s nerve endings feel like they are sparking but for once that feels good and she begs for more rather than an end to her torment. She holds her breath as Cheedo reaches between her legs anticipating touch, but the unexpected feel of lips rather than fingers jolts her into a rather noisier and more pleasurable exhale than she intended. Dag had not taught Cheedo how to do his, had not even realised it was a thing they could share. There have of course been times when she or one of the other Wives have been taken up to where Joe was working and made to sit beneath his desk while he argued about some trade negotiation. Forced to sit perfectly still with his penis in their mouth for perhaps an hour until he was ready to make use of them fully. She never knew it was possible to return the favour and that it would as glorious as this. For a long glorious moment, Dag feels every bit as glorious and radiant as Cheedo claims she looks. When she’s done, she answers Cheedo’s shy query of ‘Good?’ by dragging her up to kneel hovering over Dag’s face, and proceeds to show her just how ‘good’ it had felt. 

~

Miss Giddy is not to be trusted. She loves them, certainly, and will refrain from telling tales on them when she thinks there is no harm to their action. But she hoards her knowledge, uses it to control them – whether shame or blackmail – the threat of revelation always lingering. Knowledge is power. Secret knowledge - whether midwifery, history or human weakness - has kept her safe and alive long enough to get old. It's the only currency she has at her disposal and she spends it cannily. Miss Giddy has seen too many ‘wives’ pass through her care to believe that anything can or will change. She remembers when Furiosa sat in Cheedo’s place – youngest and most precious, a treasure stolen from the Green Place. Remembers her regret when she could no longer put off informing the Immortan that Furiosa was too old, that if her blood had not yet come it never would, his favourite was barren. 

Furiosa had clawed her way up from rejected wife to mechanic, all the way up to being the only female Imperator. No other man was allowed to cross the threshold of the Wives home. Once a trusted lieutenant had been allowed to visit to make repairs, only to become besotted with one of the Wives and steal her away. They hadn’t got far before Joe had caught them, had killed them both with a brutality designed to prevent a re-occurrence but still, he could no longer risk allowing the Imperators access. But Furiosa, as a former wife, makes a perfect substitute; she can perform the repairs and, especially since she lost her arm in battle, serve as a visual warning of the brutality and danger of the world outside their cossetted prison life. 

Joe cannot comprehend how a woman might be a rival to his Wives affections. Miss Giddy does, she also knows that Furiosa is not supposed to speak of the Green Place to them. She bites her tongue, allows the familiarity to grow between this Imperator and the newest batch of Wives. She understands as Joe cannot, that the stories they share bind Furiosa to them as surely as any failsafe on the rigs. Furiosa grew up in a matriarchal society, the Wives have become her people and she will not abandon them. If she were to run she would need to take them with her and while Miss Giddy does not doubt she could get one or two away safely, six are another matter. Furiosa does not trust Miss Giddy, but she understands that they are both as much prisoners of Joe as his Wives. Furiosa will not abandon her either.

~

Furiosa and Angharad argue long and hard about so many things. From acceptable levels of violence to just how much food and water they can get away with stealing for their travels. They are in the middle of something incriminating and the need to establish the extent of Miss Giddy’s loyalty to them versus her loyalty to Joe becomes suddenly vitally important. Cheedo and Dag turn to each other in desperation and provide the most effective distraction they can imagine. There is no mistaking their kiss for sisterly affection; it is a lover’s embrace by every definition of the word. 

The Dag is pregnant and Cheedo is still protected by her innocence, so there is no retaliatory beating. Instead they are made to wear strange metal contraptions that Miss Giddy calls chastity belts. They would be very effective at keeping any male lover from touching them. Miss Giddy teaches them how to dress around them, laughing quietly to herself at how ineffective they are at keeping out small and nimble hands. (Once the others are asleep, Cheedo and Dag will explore just how much they can work around these ‘belts’. It’s awkward and limiting, but the hand cramps and scuffed knuckles are worth it.) The rest of the Wives take the lesson to heart, Miss Giddy must tell anything she knows but will only tell as much as she has to. They hide their plotting and planning, so that she may pretend that she does not see. 

The day comes when they must go. There is to be a run to Gas Town and who knows if there will be another before Angharad’s baby is born. Miss Giddy wakes to find the walls painted and the Wives gone. Furiosa stands over her offering her good hand. 

“Come with us,” she offers. 

She knows from Furiosa’s tales that the Vulvulini value knowledge and age in their women, that there would be a place for her in their precious Green Place. She knows too that she has never set foot outside the Citadel in all her long days, that she had her chance to run and never took it. Fear will stay her feet now as surely as they did long ago and she will get them killed. She loves them too well to do that to them. Instead she reaches out for Furiosa’s other hand. (Remembers Furiosa’s long ago derisive mutter of ‘all shiny and chrome’.) The one loosely holding a shotgun. 

“Let an old woman have her revenge, I am not a thing either.” 

Furiosa hands over the shotgun like she always knew that would be Miss Giddy’s answer. In return she gives Furiosa the keys to their prison-cum-sanctum so that when the fear comes she cannot betray them one last time. Every time before she had thought she had nothing left to loose, Joe had found something else to bind her with, but this time she thinks it’s really true. Perhaps she can finally have revenge on Joe, not for all the things he did to her – though they are many – but for all the things he’s had her do on his behalf.


End file.
